All My Secrets (25 page)

‘It’s beautiful,’ I breathe.

‘It is.’ Josh hesitates. ‘And, in case there isn’t another chance to say it, I’m happy for you if you’re happy with Kit.’

I shoot a look at him, but before I can speak Pepper is scrambling to her knees, pointing across the sea.

‘Look!’ she cries. ‘Land! We’re heading for land!’

I scan the horizon. A dark ridge rises up over the sea, its uneven edges just visible against the deep velvety blue of the sky.

‘Are we really going towards it?’ I ask anxiously.

‘Yes,’ Josh says. ‘But we can still help the boat along.’ He reaches into the water and, using his arm like an oar, propels the
Aurora
forward. I join him,
forgetting my parched throat as I pull at the gentle waves. Pepper is shaking the others awake. Soon everyone is up, kneeling three on each side of the boat, helping to steer it towards land.

In less than half an hour, we’re scrambling ashore. Everyone jumps out of the boat and pulls it onto the dark beach.

‘Where the hell are we?’ Josh asks.

‘Could be anywhere along the coast, I guess,’ Kit says. ‘I can’t see any lights.’

Shivering in the cool night air, the six of us trudge along the beach. There are still plenty of stars in view, but the moon is a soft smudge behind the night clouds and, as Kit says, there are
no electric lights of any kind.

‘This place is deserted,’ I say.

‘Wait, what’s that?’ Pepper asks.

I follow her pointing finger to an old brick house. No lights are on inside, but I can just make out the slope of its roof and a row of boarded-up windows along the first floor.

‘It’s shelter,’ Kit says grimly. ‘Of a kind.’

‘But there’s obviously no one inside,’ Josh points out. ‘Shouldn’t we keep moving, find a road, maybe flag down a car? Get help?’

‘Yes,’ I agree, ‘there might be lights and people if we go a bit further.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous to be wandering about in the middle of the night?’ Anna asks plaintively.

‘Well, I’m not going anywhere,’ Pepper says. ‘I’m freezing cold and I ache all over from steering that stupid boat.’

She sets off towards the house.

‘She’s right,’ Josh concedes. ‘Let’s rest here till dawn and see what we can see in the morning.’

We follow Pepper to the house. As we get nearer, it becomes obvious that it was once quite grand and far bigger than I first thought, stretching back into a low-walled garden. Though every
window is boarded up and the front door so rotten that it collapses with just a few quick pushes, the remnants of lights and carpets and patterned wallpaper are dimly visible in every room.

We find a room upstairs at the back of the house and huddle together for warmth. Outside, just visible through the cracks in the boards at the window, the sky lightens to grey, and pink swirls
gather at its edges.

‘I can’t wait to get a proper meal,’ Kit muses sleepily.

‘Yeah and a shower,’ Pepper adds.

‘I want my guitar back,’ Josh says with a grunt.

‘Did you know a human head remains conscious for about twenty seconds after decapitation?’ Samuel asks.

‘Er, thanks for that, Samuel,’ Josh says.

‘I really need to see my mum.’ That is Anna. She looks at me anxiously. ‘I guess you’ll be wanting to go to the police, Evie?’

‘I’m going to call my dad first,’ I say.

Kit squeezes my hand. ‘I can’t wait to meet him,’ he says.

An uncomfortable knot tightens in my stomach. I nod, feeling helpless. I sense Josh’s eyes are on me, but I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze. Josh, like everyone else, thinks
I’m happy with Kit. He accepts that; he hasn’t even asked me out himself.

And I am happy with Kit.

At least I think I am.

I fall asleep, wedged between Pepper and Kit, waking to find Josh shaking our shoulders and hissing in our ears: ‘Someone’s here, on the stairs, listen.’

We’re all awake suddenly, alert, leaning towards the door.

The creak of a floorboard sounds outside. A light flashes through the crack in the door. Beyond, on the landing, comes the low muttering of voices.

Beside me, Pepper gasps. Anna clutches Josh’s arm. I hold my breath, still half-asleep, as two long seconds pass.

And then the door is flung open and a torch glares in our eyes.

‘Evie?’ a familiar voice calls.

I jump to my feet as the torchlight dips and I come face to face with the last person I expected to see.

Uncle Gavin stands in the doorway, his forehead knitted in an anxious frown.

‘Evie?’ he says again.

‘Oh!’ I let out a strangled sob of shock, delight and relief as I hurl myself across the room and into his arms.

‘What are you doing here?’ I gasp. ‘How did you—?’ I stop, suddenly aware that my uncle is standing stiffly, his arms by his sides, not hugging me back.

Behind him, another figure moves. I back away as the torchlight reveals Miss Bunnock, her hair swept off her face in a tight ponytail. Her gun glints in her hand. I turn to my uncle.

‘What? I don’t . . . what’s going on?’ I stammer.

‘Come with me.’ Gavin drags me into the next room and slams the door shut. It’s smaller than the one everyone else is still huddling in, though just as empty, with boards over
the window and a threadbare carpet on the floor. Behind us, I can hear the others shrieking my name and then Miss Bunnock threatening them.

‘Evie, listen, I need the password—’ Gavin starts.

‘How did you find me?’ I ask. It’s not the question I really want to ask. That seems too big, too terrifying.

‘We tracked the
Aurora
,’ he says. ‘Using the tracker Francine planted on the boat when she hid it in the cave.’

‘Francine?’

‘Francine Bunnock, my girlfriend,’ Gavin says matter-of-factly.

‘Oh,’ I say, flatly. I suddenly remember how he told me back in Scotland that he was single. It’s only a small lie on top of all the other ways in which Gavin has clearly
deceived me, but it still hurts.

‘Francine loves me very much,’ Gavin says with a nasty smile. ‘She’d do anything for me.’

I gulp, edging my way nearer to the question that’s now filling my mind. ‘
You
got her to do . . . all the stuff on the island? The ghost and everything? It was
you
?’

‘Yes.’ In the flickering light of Gavin’s torch, I can see the impatience on his face. No concern, just frustration. ‘Come on, darling, what’s the password to
Irina’s safety-deposit box?’

‘You want to kill me?’ The question shoots from my lips at last.

Gavin brushes it away with a wave of his hand. ‘The password, Evie,’ he repeats. ‘It must have been among the papers that lawyer gave you?’

‘Password?’ I echo blankly as the horrific, sickening reality settles inside me: my uncle wants me dead and is prepared to go to any lengths, including murdering my friends, to make
it happen. ‘I don’t know about any password.’

Gavin studies my face. ‘Come on, darling. This isn’t anything personal. I just want the information so I can get some of the money straightaway.’

‘Money? I’ve never heard of a safety-deposit box. Or a password. And I’m not your darling.’ I take in a quick, trembling breath. ‘What are you doing this for? Is .
. . is it about my inheritance from Irina?’

Gavin paces across the room, then turns to face me again, his hands clasped behind his back.

‘Irina . . . your mother . . . wasn’t what you think,’ he says slowly. ‘She didn’t set that trust fund up for you . . . She barely knew what she was doing when she
signed the papers.’

I stare at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that our parents organised it.
They
were the ones trying to make Irina get a grip on her life. I think they hoped if she was on top of her finances, she might get on top
of her life and start taking responsibility. It wasn’t about leaving money to
you.
They hoped that it would turn things around for her.’

‘Turn what things around?’ I ask, bewildered. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. Irina was successful. OK, so she didn’t plan on getting pregnant, but
she was a brilliant dancer. She was getting back to ballet after having me and—’

‘She was mentally ill,’ Gavin interrupts. ‘I don’t think there was a definite diagnosis, Irina refused to accept she had a problem, but she was very unstable. She took a
lot of drugs – a few of them prescribed for her, most of them not, which made the situation worse – and—’

‘No.’ I was on my feet, my fists clenched. ‘No, she was just a bit different from other people. She was special, not ill, not some drug user who—’

‘She couldn’t cope,’ Gavin says flatly. ‘Especially after you were born. I’m not saying she didn’t love you, but she sure as hell wasn’t able to look
after you. Your dad did all that. My parents helped when they were still alive, but Irina’s suicide pretty much destroy—’

‘Her
what
?’ My blood runs cold. ‘Irina didn’t kill herself. It was a traffic accident, a hit-and-run.’

Gavin shakes his head. ‘That’s just how we all agreed to present it – my parents and your dad . . . but none of us were in any doubt that Irina walked out in front of that
lorry deliberately. She’d threatened to kill herself that way enough times.’ He pauses. ‘It wasn’t her first attempt.’

My mouth feels dry. What Gavin is saying
can’t
be true.

‘She made my childhood a nightmare,’ Gavin goes on. ‘She got all the attention, all the energy. And of course she was a beautiful dancer too, so she got most of the praise and
the plaudits as well. I was just the stupid younger brother,’ he says, a bitter note to his voice. ‘I was a sideshow. And then she died, and our parents lost the will to live, and
they
died within a year or two and I’ve been living on
their
money ever since, but it’s gone now and I need yours. I’m next in line if anything happens to you
and I’m owed it, for all the chances Irina took away from me.’

My hand flies to my mouth. ‘And you think that justifies killing me?’

Gavin says nothing.

I try to process what he has said. ‘Does what you’re saying mean my dad
didn’t
keep me away from my grandparents, like you told me before?’

Gavin makes a face. ‘I guess not,’ he says. ‘Truth is that after Irina died they pretty much gave up on their own lives.’

‘Oh my God.’ I can’t believe it. So Dad didn’t stop me from having a relationship with my family after all.

Another thought hits me. ‘What about the car that nearly ran me over in Edinburgh? Were you behind that?’

Gavin gives a swift nod. ‘But then straight afterwards your dad whisked you off and I realised I was going to have to be a bit cleverer about it so I looked into Lightsea, where I
remembered Irina being sent for a few weeks in her late teens.’

I gasp. ‘That’s how there was a photo of her at Lightsea? She was a patient here before I was born? Before she met my dad?’

He nods. ‘I saw there was a job going, at the institute so I got Francine to apply for it, then once she was in I gave her the photo to plant where you’d find it.’

My mind rushes back to the night Josh, Pepper and I broke into Mr Lomax’s office. ‘So David Lomax doesn’t know anything about it?’

Gavin snorts. ‘He knows Irina was once a patient at his father’s mental-health institute. But your dad was adamant none of us should tell you about Irina being ill. Lomax was going
along with that.’

‘So Irina didn’t die on Lightsea,’ I say.

‘No. I just wanted you to believe Lomax pushed her off Easter Rock to encourage you to think Irina was trying to tell you he was her killer.’

‘So I’d follow her to Easter Rock where that Bunnock woman could push
me
off.’

‘And everyone would think it was suicide after you becoming obsessed with your mother’s ghost. Your own fixation on Irina gave me the idea.’

I bite down hard on my lip, misery consuming me. I had thought my uncle loved and cared for me, when all along he was just plotting how to take my money.

‘Hey.’ Miss Bunnock pokes her head around the door frame and gives Gavin an adoring look. ‘Did you get what you need?’

‘Evie doesn’t know,’ Gavin says. ‘No matter, we’ll get the info soon enough ourselves.’

‘You’ll inherit everything if I don’t?’ I ask, though the answer is obvious.

‘Yes, but only if you die
before
inheriting yourself at the end of August.’

‘Gavin, babe?’ Miss Bunnock says, her tone far softer than I’ve ever heard it before. She hands Gavin a small silver lighter. ‘I’ve filled this like you
said.’

‘Coming.’ Gavin takes the lighter and turns it over in his hand. As he flicks the lighter on, then off again, I recognise it as Samuel’s.

‘What are you doing with that?’ I demand.

But Gavin just slips the lighter back in his pocket and walks out of the room. A split second later, Bunnock ushers Kit, Josh and the others in. Her gun is tightly gripped in her hand.

‘You can’t do this, you bitch,’ Pepper snarls.

I stare numbly as the five of them file inside and the door is closed and locked. Josh rushes over to the window and pulls at the boards, but they’re nailed firmly against the frame.

Kit thumps on the door. ‘Let us out.’

Anna stands, trembling, in the middle of the room.

I turn to her. ‘Did you know my uncle was behind all this?’ Anna shakes her head. ‘I only ever talked to Miss Bunnock. I swear I didn’t even know the plan was to hurt
you.
I told you, I thought it was just some weird psychological experiment.’

‘It’s true, Evie,’ Kit says quietly. ‘Anna talked to me those first few nights. No details. I didn’t know it was about you, but . . . but she was asking about
whether it was ever ethical to deceive people for scientific reasons. She wanted my opinion.’

‘I just thought Kit seemed smart and . . . and more serious than everyone else,’ Anna admits. ‘I wanted his advice about what I’d been asked to do without explaining in
detail.’

I nod slowly. So that was what Anna’s interest in Kit was really about.

‘Evie?’ Josh’s voice is low and intent. ‘We need to focus on how we get out of here.’